News: Announcements

We are very happy to announce that we will be sponsoring TypeTalks 3. The date is set for 6-7 September 2013 with the symposium stage heading back to its hometown, Brno.

The two-day symposium will be preceded by a three-day information design workshop led by Finnish designer Jasso Lamberg, as well as an evening of ‘extrashort’ type presentations aka TypeShorts™. Speakers for this year include Erik van Blokland, Laura Meseguer and Radoslav Večerka.

TypeTalks was created as a collaborative activity, designed to raise awareness and draw attention to the importance and power of typeface design and typography amongst graphic design professionals and students. Three years on, it is now more than a conference just for typographers and type fanatics. TypeTalks aims to bring together creatives from across the entire design spectrum including graphic and web design, historians and even programmers.

How to enter

Just send us an example of FontFonts in use from a project that you have worked on recently and you will automatically be entered into our draw. Please send a link to your website or a PDF of your project with a brief description to news@fontfont.com.

Closing date

11.00 (CET) Tuesday 30 April. We will announce the winners shortly after the closing date.

Good Luck!

*Please note the prize is just the ticket for the conference and not travel to Berlin, so you’ll have to make your own way there ;-)

In a fun and fast-paced hour, members of the official FontFont TypeBoard will assess and review entries. It’s a golden opportunity to gain invaluable advice, tips and feedback as to how to develop your typeface further and to hear from some typographic heroes.

So, if you are attending TYPO Berlin or are in Berlin on Friday 17 May and would like your typeface to be judged in front of a live audience, make sure you attend FontFont’s first TypeReview.

How it works

On Friday 17 May at 13.00 in the Nest at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures), Erik Spiekermann, Erik van Blokland, Stephen Coles, Andreas Frohloff, Jürgen Siebert and Ivo Gabrowitsch will take to the stage to consider, review and criticize your entry in front of an audience.

How do I enter?

If you would like for your typeface to be publically judged at TYPO Berlin, please come along to the Info Counter on Thursday 16 May with a sample/specimen of your typeface to hand it in. The FontFont TypeReview will then take place the following day, Friday 17 May at 13.00 in the Nest. Due to time constraints, although we’d love to see a full family (if you have one) you can also just enter one weight and style.

FAQs

I’d really like to enter my typeface to FontFont TypeReview but I don’t have a ticket to TYPO, does this matter?

No, you don’t need a TYPO ticket. This session is open to everyone; just make sure you inform the door staff that you are attending FontFont’s TypeReview.

I don’t want to enter a typeface but I’d still like to watch, is that possible?

Yes, you can still watch. As places are limited, please make sure you arrive on time.

This sounds like a great idea but I’d much prefer to submit my typeface to the official TypeBoard, how do I do so?

The official TypeBoard takes place on 15 May. All details as to how to submit your typeface can be found on our Become a FontFont Designer page.

Can I submit my typeface to the official TypeBoard AND TypeReview?

Yes, of course you can, please just inform us clearly that you would also like your submission to be considered at the TypeReview as well as TypeBoard when you send it. Please note, you will need to be able to attend on the day if you wish to enter TypeReview. All details as to how to submit your typeface to the official TypeBoard can be found on our Become a FontFont Designer page.

Last year in our inaugural FontFont newsletter, we launched Talking Types – a regular podcast where we step outside our typographic box and speak to designers, makers, disrupters, and interesting types from across the world to hear their stories and discuss design.

In the first Talking Types, our founder Erik Spiekermann spoke to Hamish Muir and Paul McNeil about their newest typeface, FF ThreeSix and discussed bending the rules, geometric typefaces and the relationship between visual and transmitted language. In the second edition, we caught up with Kai Brach, founder and editor of Offscreen Magazine, to find out what it was like starting Offscreen, the lessons he learnt and hear what he does to step away from the distractions of the screen.

Subscribe now to hear all episodes and be one of the first to hear the next one.

It’s a not for profit event and there are tickets available at the very reasonable price of €175, if you’re quick you can still get your hands on early-bird tickets for €140 (the offer lasts until March 16 2013).

Helping you find the fonts you need in the fastest and smoothest possible way is something we strive to do. Following feedback from customers and looking at what people search for on our site, we’ve implemented a number of changes to our Find section.

You can now search by language, so whether you’re looking for a font that speaks Greenlandic or contains Cycrillic just type in the language you’re looking for and hey presto the fonts appear.

You can also order and sort your search by trendiness, popularity, price, family size and newness. Still not sure what you’re looking for and in need of some inspiration? Then hit random.

Everyone has a 2012 story. After all, it was the year the world was supposed to end.

We’re proud to bring you Our 2012 Story, a look back at all things FontFont from the past year. You could call it an annual report but we prefer not to. So sit back, take a moment and enjoy scrolling, sorting and filtering through our highlights from 2012.

Thank you to you our customers, designers and friends for continually supporting, inspiring and encouraging us.

Since the launch of Web FontFonts, we’ve wanted to keep things simple and make web typefaces that were easy to access, easy to use and easy to license (hence the pay-once self-hosting scheme). We continually work to ensure that our Web FontFonts are the fittest of the fit and are delighted to announce that they are now even more compatible.

According to the most recent statistics from October 2012*, Web FontFonts are supported by about 98 percent of all desktop web browsers in use online. So, if you embed Web FontFonts on your site, virtually every visitor will be able to see them. As if that wasn’t enough, there is hardly any difference in compatibility between Web FontFont self-hosting and getting your fonts from webfont services, as most services support about 98 percent of all desktop browsers as well!

Our analysis of browser share is based on the version numbers that support Web FontFonts as well as webfont services. The good news is that we expect this percentage to further increase up to 100% as users upgrade to newer browser versions.

*Source: w3schools.com. Only 2.1 % of browsers are not Web FontFont friendly, but we won’t hold that against them.

In our quest to make our website as functional and easy to use as possible, we have added three brand new features.

In-use gallery

First up, is our gallery of FontFonts in-use. Now when you browse through our typefaces, you can browse a picture of each font in-use. Just click on the ‘camera’ icon on the browse page and the pictures of our type in-use examples will be displayed.

You can also view an in-use gallery of each indivdiual FontFont family. So whether you’re searching for all in-use pictures of the FF Unit family, looking for an example of what FF Meta looks like when used on the Mozilla website, trying to find out what FF Fontesque looks like on a bookcover, or if you’re simply after another way of browsing through our library, our in-use gallery offers you a real visual treat.

Discover the delights of OpenType

Through the advanced typographical control of the OpenType format you can bring your text to life with fantastic features such as small caps, tabular figures, swashes and oldstyle figures. Yet it’s often said that the true features and fantastic functions of OpenType can be hidden away, often undiscovered. We hope to change that with our second new feature which helps you to see how the OpenType layout features, that are included in each FontFont, appear. For example, when you click on the OpenType features of FF Scala Regular you can now see all the different features that the font contains and how they will appear in FF Scala.

Want to find out more about OpenType and its layout features? Check out our OpenType User Guide (247KB).

Award-winning FontFonts

Our FontFont Library is home to numerous award-winning typeface designs and now you can easily see which of our FontFonts have won prizes. Just look out for the little trophy icon next to the font on the browse page. You can also read all about the typefaces which have been awarded accolades and prizes on our news section under Awards.